by Smith, S. E.
“Following you onto the bridge and making you hold my apples. I’m sure that’s why you’re stuck with this assignment.”
“You didn’t make me hold your apples. I wanted to hold them.” Kor smiled and shifted his armload of them.
Chanda quirked an eyebrow toward him. “That kind of sounded dirty, but I guess monks don’t say dirty things, right?”
“Depends on the monk. I was something of a rebel. I didn’t wear robes at the Paradise temple.”
“They didn’t mind you being nude?” Her other eyebrow rose as she gave him a leer up and down.
Even though it was a playful leer, it flustered him, and he stumbled, almost losing a few apples. Was it possible she was starting to enjoy walking places with him?
“I wasn’t nude,” Kor said. “There were shorts. Underwear. Occasionally sandals.”
“That’s it?”
“It was a tropical climate.”
“Hm.”
Chanda looked at his chest, then smiled up at him. Kor tried to decide if she was flirting with him and imagining him shirtless. It had been a while since he’d been the recipient of sexual interest. Even when he’d wandered around the temple shirtless, it had rarely earned him ogles from his fellow monks.
In case she was flirting, he tried his best winsome smile as he turned into the ladder well to head down to Engineering. Unfortunately, he was busy looking at her and clipped his shoulder on the corner. He pitched forward, lunging to catch a foot on a rung before tumbling into the hole. Somehow, he managed to keep ahold of all the apples, but he did clunk his head against the bulkhead.
Chanda arched both eyebrows again at this display of clumsiness. He sighed to himself. If she had been flirting, he’d likely put an end to it.
5
“Are you sure you didn’t miscount?” a woman was asking as Chanda headed up the ramp of the pink shuttle to its open hatch. She didn’t think it was Ankari or Dr. Keys.
“I do not miscount.” That was Dr. Keys.
Chanda stepped inside, relieved to see the pink decor ended at the hatchway. The interior was a warm off-white with passenger seats and the navigation area up front, with cabinets, counters, and a curtained-off clinic along one side, the aisle on the other.
“Is that one of the missing ones?” A young blonde-haired woman in grease-stained coveralls pointed at the quashi in Chanda’s arms.
“No.” Ankari sighed as she looked back at Chanda. She, Keys, and the blonde woman were gathered outside the curtained clinic. “That’s our demo one. What are they called again, Chanda?”
“Quashi. Or quashis. I don’t think Ko—Dr. Blackthorn found a definitive answer on how the plural is handled in his encyclopedia entry.”
Chanda’s cheeks warmed as she worried one of the women would notice the name slip. Not that she was one of the mercenaries or part of the crew. Nobody had told her she had to address the people here by last name. And nobody had said she couldn’t start to find a particularly helpful and game-playing doctor charming.
“Are they as soft as they look?” the blonde asked. “Can I pet one?”
“More might escape if their cages are opened for handling.” Dr. Keys sniffed.
“That one’s already out.” The blonde grinned and walked toward Chanda. “Hi, I’m Jamie. Are you the new girl?”
“Chanda. I’m here on a provisional basis.”
“That involves carting apples around?” Jamie tilted her head, noticing the fruit gathered in Chanda’s arms in addition to the quashi.
Chanda was ready to put her load down somewhere. Unfortunately, Kor had parted ways with her to find that detector the captain had asked about. She had nobody else to carry things for her. And nobody else to tease about nudity.
“I’m the animal wrangler today.” Chanda, aware of Ankari listening, was careful not to sound like she was complaining. In truth, she wasn’t. Feeding a cute furry animal certainly wasn’t the most arduous of tasks, though she hoped the company settled down to regular business soon so she could start proving her worth.
Jamie reached out and ran a hand along the back of the quashi, careful not to bump its antennae. It—she, as Kor had arbitrarily decided—trilled. A chorus of answering trills surprised Chanda. They came from behind the curtains.
Dr. Keys shook her head and muttered something. Chanda thought she caught the word “ridiculous.”
“They may want some apples too,” Chanda said and walked forward to peer between the curtains.
No less than two dozen more quashi waited in the clinic, the cages stacked haphazardly on a counter and exam table, some improvised from less than ideal materials. Still, the animals weren’t large and with only a few in each cage, they had plenty of room. Though it appeared they liked to hang out in clumps with their bodies pressed against each other. Kor had said they were from a freezing climate so they shouldn’t be cold. Maybe they simply liked each other’s company.
“Can I help you feed them?” Jamie asked.
“Of course.”
“I grew up on a farm, but I’ve never seen creatures like these.”
Ankari cleared her throat as Chanda and Jamie passed through the curtains. “I know it’s not exactly what you signed on for, Chanda, but could you go hunt for the three missing ones? I’ve got a bunch of calls I need to return before we’re too far out to speak to people without hours of lag, and Dr. Keys needs to… grumble.”
“I need to collate my data for the promotional material you’re writing,” Keys said. “You are the one who requested actual data.”
“This is true,” Ankari said. “Accuracy in marketing is good to have. Makes people more likely to trust you.”
Chanda turned attentively toward Ankari, wondering if it was too soon to ask her questions about her marketing techniques, about how she had gotten the word out about her services. And how she’d convinced people to pay enough to make sure all the employees were compensated and her business grew profitable.
“Ladies?” came a familiar voice from the ramp before Chanda could open her mouth. “Can I come in to look at your quashis?”
“Did that sound dirty to anyone else?” Ankari asked.
“No,” Keys said as Jamie said, “Yes.”
Chanda stuck her head through the curtains and waved for Kor to come in. He’d snapped a small device to the side of his tablet—the life-signs detector the captain had mentioned?
“Dr. Blackthorn practiced saying dirty things while he was at a temple where clothing wasn’t required,” Chanda explained as he walked in, his broad-shouldered form filling the aisle.
His eyebrows twitched upward. “That’s not exactly how I explained my monastic days.”
“No? That’s what I took away from the story. There are lots of quashis in here.” Chanda ducked back into the cage-filled clinic where Jamie had found a knife—no, that was a scalpel—and was cutting slices of apple. Happy trills sounded as she inserted them into the cages. The quashis shuffled forward, almost as one, and squished themselves together around the treats.
“I need to take readings from one to get a baseline.” Kor turned his tablet toward the one Chanda had been carrying around.
Even though Chanda wouldn’t mind having her arms free, she hadn’t yet stuck the animal in a cage. After all the time she had spent with the creature, she was tempted to name her.
“So, you only want to see one of our quashis?” Jamie grinned over her shoulder.
“Why do I get the feeling that the women in this shuttle would find anything dirty?” Kor asked.
“Not all of us,” Keys muttered.
Chanda set the fluffy quashi on the exam table for him.
“I have gifts,” came a male voice from the hatchway.
“Put them with the others, please,” Ankari said.
Chanda looked up as one of the mercenaries walked through the curtains with a quashi tucked under each arm. He chomped on something as he entered. Gum? A fake strawberry scent wafted from him.
&nbs
p; “Where would you like your escaped critters?” he asked Jamie, then gave Chanda a curious look.
Chanda didn’t think she had met the man yet, but that applied to most of the mercenaries on the ship thus far.
“Ankari?” Jamie asked. “Just put them in the cages?”
Ankari poked her head into the crowded clinic. “Yes. Thank you, Tick. Lauren promises to reward you copiously and vigorously tonight for your assistance in this matter.”
“I—what?” came Dr. Keys’s startled voice from the back of the shuttle.
Tick grinned. Was that truly his name? How awful.
“I’m sure of that,” he said.
“Does this mean my services won’t be needed?” Kor asked as Tick stepped in, handing the creatures off to Jamie to slip into cages with the others. They trilled cheerfully at the reunion.
“Your services, Doc?” Tick asked. “Did some of them have ouchies?"
“Not that I’m aware of, but the captain decided I should go looking for the missing ones.” Kor waved his tablet.
“Oh? Did you piss him off? That seems like a job for a tracker. Or a private.”
“I don’t think so,” Kor said. “Though it’s possible I didn’t express enough enthusiasm for his green drinks when he offered to share one with me.”
Tick’s nose wrinkled. “Nobody is enthused about those. Not even Ankari, and she actually cares about his feelings.”
“I drink them occasionally,” Ankari said. “They’re not that bad. Tick, there’s a third one missing. I don’t suppose you caught sign of it too?”
Tick shook his head. “Just these two. They were moseying around the shuttle bay out there. Good thing nobody was planning to take off, or they would have been blown out into space.”
Chanda shuddered at the idea of the small creatures being killed.
“The computer would have sensed it if there were life-forms in the shuttle bay,” Jamie said, “and wouldn’t have let the air out.”
“You sure those count as life-forms?” Tick asked. “And not ambulatory mops?”
“They move a lot for mops.” Ankari looked to Kor. “Doctor, maybe if you ran your detector out in the shuttle bay, you could find our third one. We appreciate the help, by the way. I didn’t mean for Viktor—the captain—to be inconvenienced by our delivery.”
“That isn’t the delivery we ordered,” Keys called in. “He wouldn’t have been inconvenienced by my rats.”
Ankari waved dismissively toward her. “Do you want Chanda to help you search, Doctor? I haven’t had a chance to set up a project for her to work on yet, so she’s available.”
“I’m available,” Chanda said agreeably, forgetting marketing thoughts for the moment. She ought to wait to start questioning Ankari until she had been here a while anyway.
“Reckon the doc will be glad to hear that.” Tick winked. “Or he would be if he wasn’t all monkly. Striker, at least, will be glad to hear about the availability of an extra female.”
“I’ve met Striker,” Chanda said.
“Have you? I guess that means you’re not available to him then.”
“That’s correct.”
“Amazing how quickly that man alienates women.”
“Not just women,” Kor murmured, waving his detector over the quashi on the table.
Jamie had tucked the two others into cages and was doling out more apples.
“I’m ready,” Kor told Chanda.
Chanda nodded and followed him to the shuttle exit, leaving her furry friend behind, though with some reluctance. She’d already grown attached to her charge.
She trailed Kor around the bay as he pointed his detector under and behind the vessels parked within. Several gray shuttles displaying prominent weapons were lined up next to the pink one. They were far more what one would expect from mercenary craft.
“I don’t detect any more quashis in the shuttle bay,” Kor said after completing a circuit. “Not that I expected to find one Sergeant Tick had missed. He has a good reputation as a tracker and for finding things in any city or wilderness. On one’s own ship seems a fairly easy environment to search.”
“The problem with the chewed cables arose in Engineering, didn’t it?”
“Yes, we’ll head there next. I just thought we should look where the others were found. The article mentioned that they’re social animals rather than solitary creatures.”
“Maybe a particularly fine-smelling apple in Engineering lured one away from its brethren.” Chanda looked at Kor as they left the bay, tempted to ask why he’d left a tropical temple on Paradise. Had something lured him away?
But it only took a few seconds to walk to Engineering, and three mercenaries worked inside, so Chanda didn’t ask her question.
A thunderous bang came from off to the side, and Kor whirled, almost dropping his tablet as he whipped out a pistol and pointed it.
“Sorry,” a young man said, lifting his hands. He was up on a catwalk above large machinery and had accidentally dropped a huge toolbox over the side.
Kor took a deep breath and returned his pistol to its holster. There seemed to be a tremor to his hand. Adrenaline coursing through his veins? Chanda nodded understanding, having seen similar behavior from her father. If Kor had endured grisly battles in the Crimson Ops, she had no trouble guessing why he had transferred occupations and eventually left the military.
“Are you all right?” Chanda whispered and rested a hand on his arm.
“Yes.” Kor cleared his throat. “Just overreacted.”
“It happens.” Chanda couldn’t think of anything more useful to say—she’d found that just accepting him had worked better with her father than trying to fix things with words—so she squeezed Kor’s arm, then patted it before letting go.
His smile appeared bolstered, so it seemed to be the right thing.
The gray-haired man in the rumpled shirt—Commander Borage, wasn’t it?—stepped forward. “We’re still trying to find the captain’s glitch, Doc. You got that set for looking for escaped fur balls?” He pointed to the tablet.
“Yes.” Kor raised the tablet again. “We’ll take a look around.”
“Lieutenant Sparks has some frayed—maybe chewed—wires over there if you want to lick them or sniff them.”
Kor blinked. “Why would I do that?”
“I have no idea, but Tick does things like that.”
“He also chews that awful caffeinated gum. He’s an odd man.”
“Odd men are the norm on this ship,” Borage said.
“I’ve noticed.” Kor walked forward, the holographic display over his tablet showing the human life signs in the room.
Chanda, feeling superfluous, trailed after him. There wasn’t anything she could do, but Ankari had asked her to help. She just wasn’t sure how to do that.
Borage gave her a curious look—she was getting a lot of those today—but he did not, like so many of the other mercenaries, ogle her. Judging by the coffee stains and crumbs on his shirt, he was more interested in ogling food and beverages than women.
Borage walked over to join the man he had pointed out, Lieutenant Sparks. They had a panel open and were investigating circuit boards. Perhaps licking wires.
Kor stopped near the center of the room and slowly rotated his tablet around, the detector attachment making faint beeps as it scanned. Judging by the way his lips pressed together, he did not find what he hoped to find.
“Is it calibrated finely enough to find creatures as small as the quashis?” Chanda asked.
“Yes. It can detect trace quashi elements on you.”
“Elements?”
Kor looked over and plucked a blue strand of fur from her sleeve. Their skin didn’t touch, but a little tingle went up her arm regardless, making her wish she was wearing a sleeveless shirt. And that his touch had lingered.
She snorted inwardly. When had she elevated Kor from thugly mercenary to someone she wanted touching her?
“What class of scientist
do you play in Nature’s Wrath?” she asked.
“Xenobiologist,” he said without hesitating. “I know the quests are easier if you pick a botanist or zoologist, someone with inherent plant and animal knowledge, but I knew where the Ring of Neo-Druidism could be found, and I wanted the difficulty bonuses.”
Chanda grinned. That was when she’d started wanting him touching her. When he’d gotten geeky on her. With her own game, no less. “That ring is amazing. I always get it for my characters.”
“What about you? What’s your favorite class?” Kor glanced at her. “Or was when you used to play.”
As if she had ever stopped playing. It was mostly beta testing, but still. She was tempted to tell him then that she’d lied earlier, that she did all the design, some of the coding, and dealt with all the financial problems, but the young man with the toolbox walked past behind them, clattering and clanking. It wasn’t the best setting for admissions.
“I’ve played most of the classes at least a little,” Chanda said, “but I actually like the viticulturist best. There are tons of grapes in the game that give you stat bonuses, and you get free wine at the bar when you go into town.”
“It’s important for you to get your virtual avatar drunk?”
“Sometimes, you get clues in the game through gossip at the bars, and the NPCs are more likely to talk freely around you if you’ve been imbibing.”
“Really?” Kor asked. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“Really. You should check all the network guides out there.”
“For someone who only played a little, you’re rather knowledgeable about the game.” He smiled down at her, his eyelashes lowering halfway.
She didn’t think the words were a judgment, but maybe he was letting her know that he was on to her earlier lie. Oh, he couldn’t guess that it was her game, but he could tell she knew it far better than she had implied. He didn’t seem to mind. Actually, those deep green eyes, the lashes curtaining them slightly, were gazing at her with warmth and… interest?
